100 Great Reasons to Eat Dead Animals

I’ve been sitting here for three years now, trying to write this article. Before I give up on the project entirely, let’s briefly examine the counter-argument. A recent study showed conclusively that vegetarians scored an average of 10 points higher in their IQ tests. Now, stupid vegetarians will likely spill their lentils in excitement at the prospect that not eating animal cadavers is making them smarter by the minute. Being smart predisposes one to being vegetarian, but being vegetarian doesn’t make you smarter. Stupid vegetarians.

Anyway, I’m a vegetarian - note the lack of a capital ‘V’ as I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with eating animals. Also I do eat fish, which means that I’m not at all a vegetarian… see, thing is that fish get to be fish and swim around first; also they are more dissimilar to me than other mammals are. Did you know that vegetarians who eat fish have the highest life expactancy, whereas vegans and meat-eaters are about the same? End feeble justification.

Why go Vego?

There are quite a lot of fairly compelling arguments for why we are naturally meant to be vegetarian - teeth, digestive systems, raw meat will make you sick et. al. but I don’t suspect that these arguments are what make them smarter people less inclined to dine upon the rotting flesh of beasts. No. What’s more likely is that those of a higher intelligence have a more developed capacity to see things outside of convention - to think independently. And if we are to think about whether it’s okay to keep animals in torturous conditions, castrate them without anaesthetic, callously slaughter them etc. then we’re probably going to have to raise an ethical eyebrow or two.

Sixty years ago the idea of black people being human, let alone equal, was seen as preposterous by the many. One hundred years ago women were largely considered to be unquestionably inferior. Everyone went happily about their business enslaving black people and subjugating women with a perfectly clear conscience - we see what we want to see and what we’re taught to see; not necessarily what is.

The ethical tenet should, obviously, be that suffering is to be avoided - for black people, women and animals. Not that suffering should be avoided for these guys over here, but not those ones over there who have four legs (bad) and I think may have called yo mamma a ho. Most urban humans try to disassociate their meat from the animal from which it came and, asked point-blank, would be unlikely to say that they supported the conditions that animals like pigs and chickens are kept in. Them continuing to eat those pigs and chickens is tantamount to the slave-owning, wife-subjugating person of olde (except that they didn’t eat their slaves and women when they were finished treating them awfully). That slave owner buried his head in the sand too, or threw up his hands and said ‘But I can’t afford to pay them for picking cotton - the economy would collapse and we’d all starve’ or somesuch.

In my opinion organisations such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are more divisive that they are effective. They seem not dissimilar to dogmatic fundamentalist religions in their manner and actions. Having said that, the reality of what happens to animals in factory farms is something that really shouldn’t be ignored and organisations such as Voiceless offer a much less hysterical and more balanced philosophy.

This part here is the red pill blue pill bit. If you go to this link and watch the film, your life won’t be the same again. I strongly suggest you do - there’s something about the truth which is just a whole lot better than ignorance. Don’t ask me why though.